Establishing a Marksmanship Evaluation

Part of achieving any goal is having a way to measure progress. Ideally, the best way to measure how well I’m doing achieving my long term goals is to go out and attempt them. The problem is that I only have ready access to a 100 meter range, not the 300 meters specified in my outlined goals. There is a 300 yard range about an hour away, but that is too far to regularly fit into my schedule. I already have enough trouble getting to the 100 meter range that is minutes away from my office.

My first instinct is to consider reduced size targets. The strictest standard I have in my goals is 6 inches at 300 meters with a magnified optic and bipod. This works out to about 2 MOA. The other standard works out to 4 MOA. I suppose using two inch and four inch targets at 100 meters (or smaller for closer) would essentially meet the same requirement. But this has the drawback of not allowing for practice with wind and bullet drop variables. If I’m being honest, though, wind and drop aren’t huge players out to 200 meters (and only marginally more at 300). A carefully careful chosen BZO helps with that problem, should I choose to go that route.

Still, from looking at my past practice targets, I don’t think I’m far enough along to worry a lot about wind/drop. I’m still working on the fundamentals, especially from offhand where I really don’t think I’m holding a 4 MOA standard.

So, at this point, I think the best route is going to be something along the lines of a dot drill. I’ve seen (and used) these before for precision rifles, and I think they have great utility. I’ll look into getting appropriately sized dots and setting them up. The second part of this is going to be timing standards.